The present disclosure relates to vehicle headlights, and more particularly, to headlight leveling control methods and systems.
Motor vehicles are generally equipped with headlights that are incorporated near the front of a vehicle to assist occupants of the vehicle to see conditions exterior to the vehicle and to allow other vehicles and pedestrians to clearly see the vehicle.
Headlights may be installed to provide particular light projection to surrounding vehicle environments. Headlight intensity and direction are designed to provide an optimal amount of illumination to vehicle surroundings while still ensuring the comfort of other vehicle occupants. Under certain loading conditions, such as increased occupants or hauling or towing cargo, the pitch angle of the vehicle may change resulting in undesirable headlight projection that may lead to poor illumination of surrounding environments and/or discomfort for occupants of nearby vehicles.
Headlight leveling systems have been developed to allow for the angle of light projection to be changed depending on the load conditions of the vehicle. Some systems use a manual control located near a steering wheel, and may be unintuitive to an occupant, hard to use, and require external references to properly select headlight level. Such systems generally utilize a physical switch near the steering controls with several numeric values for each setting, such as 0-5. ‘0’ may represent the setting without adjustment for loading conditions, and ‘5’ may represent the maximum adjusted aim setting in the down direction. When the vehicle is loaded, a user would then be required to reference an external calculation or table to select the correct headlight level setting, or be forced to guess on their own as to which setting is correct.
Automatic headlight leveling systems have been developed that require the use of sensors that determine vehicle conditions, but such systems may be undesirable due to cost and weight.
It will be desirable to provide manual vehicle headlight leveling controls that are easily understood and accessed by occupants of a vehicle that utilize existing vehicle components and systems to reduce the likelihood that the vehicle is operated with undesirable headlight levels.